


chances of survival

by rainbowshoes



Series: Tony Stark Bingo 2019 [12]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Extremis Tony Stark, Kidnapped Tony Stark, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Presumed Dead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2019-11-29 02:06:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18216752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowshoes/pseuds/rainbowshoes
Summary: tony is abducted and missing - after so long, nearly everyone believes he's deadbucky doesn't - and he's going to find tony to prove he isn't deadfor the Tony Stark Bingo 2019R3: AbductedA1: Presumed Dead(to be updated later!)and! the WinterIron Bingo 2019I3: You're LateN2: MysteryB1: Not Dead Bad Guy





	1. Abducted

It had been all over every major news outlet for days, now.  _ Tony Stark Missing!  _ the headlines proclaimed. Everyone had theories, hundreds of thousands of tips had been called in, and some even went so far as to joke about it. Tony was probably just vacationing on some tropical island somewhere, right?

It didn't matter that Tony hated sand and water. He didn't even go swimming these days. Hadn't since Afghanistan. Pepper was running SI with cool efficiency, redirecting questions away from Tony every time she held a press conference about some new technology or breakthrough or merger or whatever the event was about. To those that didn't know her, she seemed heartless, cruel. To those that did, they saw the way she barely held back her tears as she fought to find any possible lead on where Tony could possibly be. 

It shouldn't have been possible for Tony to go missing like this. Not again. He'd put a tracker in his thigh, one with a powerful enough signal that FRIDAY should have been able to find him no matter where on the planet he was. Rhodey theorized that whoever had taken Tony had either known about the tracker or found it quickly enough to cut it out before leaving Bangkok. 

Tony had been visiting the SI plant in Thailand to do some upgrades on the arc reactor they had powering the city. Each of the Avengers blamed themselves for not going along with Tony on his trip. Most of them hadn't even been available at the time, but Clint had been doing some digging on some strange activity going on in Bangladesh, and that was close enough, right? He could have dropped in on Tony before going back to the US to report what he'd discovered - which wasn't much of anything. Steve, Natasha, Wanda, and Sam had been in Argentina on a different assignment, but they figured they should have flown straight to Bangkok as soon as they got the news, they never should have gone to the compound first. Better to have eyes on the ground, after all. 

Bucky and Rhodey blamed themselves the most. Rhodey knew he couldn't have done anything, but he still blamed himself - he always did when things like this happened. He played the ‘if only’ game a thousand times a day. He knew better, but he could never seem to stop himself. He swore to himself that if Tony came back with another fucking body modification, he'd never let the man out of his sight. Bucky… Bucky knew he should have gone with Tony. He should have insisted on it, even when Tony said he should just stay at the compound. He should have stolen a fucking quinjet and kept eyes on Tony at all times. 

Yet Tony had gone alone, without even Happy to back him up, and he'd been taken from them.

They had no leads. Nothing at all. That was, perhaps, the most frustrating aspect of the situation. Aside from Tony being missing at all, of course. No one had taken the credit for Tony's abduction. No one bragged about it in the depths of the internet. There were no ransom demands. There were no major attacks. There were no new weapons suddenly available on the market. Whoever had taken Tony had done a damn good job of covering their trail, and they had absolutely nothing to go on. 

That didn't mean the Avengers gave up hope. Not at all. If anything, it made them more determined than ever to figure out where Tony was. Yet, after Tony had been missing for thirty days, Pepper had to follow the orders Tony had left behind and proceed as if he wasn't coming back. She refused to declare him legally dead until she had no choice, therefore nullifying several of the clauses in Tony's will, but she had to keep SI going. Rhodey had to keep the Avengers going. Steve was still their leader in the field, but when it came to anything official, it all fell to Rhodey. 

The Avengers returned to their missions and assignments, reluctant though they were. Bucky wasn't an Avenger, though. Bucky kept looking. He dug into any possible conspiracy theory type lead he could find, and he tracked it down to its source. He always came up empty-handed. He didn't lose hope, but he had to admit even to himself that Tony's chances of survival were microscopic. 


	2. Presumed Dead

It had been three months. The last time Tony had been missing for this long, he'd been held captive by the Ten Rings in Afghanistan. Rhodey was slowly losing hope. Pepper, too. Steve wouldn't admit it, but he though, sometimes, that maybe Tony wasn't coming back after all. Wanda was morose and sullen. Even if she'd hated Tony for a long, long time, they'd grown much closer over the years she'd been with the Avengers, and she missed him. Clint and Natasha knew what happened to people who went missing the way Tony did. They'd seen it too many times before. They knew there was always a chance Tony wasn't gone for good, but, well. There was a greater chance he was, and they were pragmatists. 

Bucky refused to accept that Tony wasn't coming home. He couldn't. It would destroy him. 

“Buck,” Steve said gently, standing at the entrance to the conference room they'd dedicated, long ago, to figuring out where Tony was and how to bring him home, “maybe you should take a break.”

“No,” Bucky said gruffly. “Tony's still out there, and I'm not going to stop until I find him.”

Steve sighed and stepped into the room. “And what if you don't? What then?”

“Guess we just better hope that doesn't happen,” Bucky said, the threat clear. “If you ain't gonna help, get out.”

There was a long pause as Steve looked around at the updated maps and information peppering the glass walls. “What happens if he's dead?”

“I'll bring home his body,” Bucky said, deceptively simply. He turned to look at Steve, hands clenched into fists. “You really have given up on him, haven't you?” 

“No,” Steve said immediately. “It's - it's just a possibility. And I want you to be prepared for that.” 

Bucky sneered. “Think I've got more than enough experience with death.”

“But I have more experience with losing people who are close to me,” Steve countered. “I've lost you. I lost Peggy. I woke up sixty years in the future and everyone I knew was dead. I know what that feels like, and that? That isn't easy to get through, especially not on your own. And you're acting like you're on your own, Buck. You're shutting us out.”

Bucky had no response to that. They weren't helping to find Tony anymore, they'd moved on with their lives and their responsibilities. Why should he bother them? He didn't want to get in the way, what with not being an Avenger. He lived at the compound because Tony said he could. If it came down to it, he knew that the official rules in place stated that he wasn't, in fact, allowed to live there. He wasn't hinging everything on finding Tony - he  _ wasn't _ \- but if he didn't? His life would have to change in a big way. 

Steve sighed again. He did that a lot around Bucky, especially lately. “Let me know if you find anything, okay? For what it's worth, I really do hope Tony's still alive.”

What Bucky heard, unspoken in Steve's apologetic tone, was that he didn't think that was the case. 

Tony had to be missing for seven years before Pepper didn't have much choice but to declare him legally dead. SI's board of directors would likely push for it sooner than that, but he knew he had time. He could do a lot with that much time. 

Bucky looked across the maps and diagrams and various tidbits of information scattered across the glass in front of him. “FRIDAY?”

“Yes, Sergeant?”

“If you had a body and you could start looking on foot in every rat hole on this planet, where would you begin?”

FRIDAY was silent for a moment, and then she brought forth a map with a tiny red dot. It was in Turkey, of all places, near the border of both Syria and Iraq. “Here,” she said, a soft but proud note to her voice.

“Gather everything you have and put it on a tablet for me,” Bucky said. “We're going on a field trip.” He said it grimly, with much the same expression Tony would have treated the expression. 

“I'll have the bots gather some supplies I think you'll need,” she said with a more upbeat, cheerful tone.

Bucky cleared the conference room's walls and stalked out, heading for his room. He was done waiting around, done sitting idly by and waiting for someone else to find the information he needed. He'd proposed this exact solution just weeks after Tony vanished, but no one had agreed with him, and so he'd remained. He didn't give a damn anymore. He'd do whatever it took to find Tony and bring him home because Tony  _ wasn't  _ dead, no matter what everyone else thought. 


	3. You're Late

It took a solid month of searching on the ground before Bucky finally found a decent lead. He'd dug up Natasha's and Clint's old contacts and bribed or intimidated or threatened them into giving him the information he needed. He bounced from country to country, mostly illegally, calling on the skills HYDRA had given him so long ago. 

FRIDAY's gift to him, just before he left the compound, was a brand new set of tac gear. Tony had apparently made it for him before he'd known whether or not Bucky was going to join the Avengers. Rather than wait for an answer, Tony had made the gear anyway and just stashed it away when Bucky declined the offer. He'd not only designed the gear - made of the same durable yet light kevlar-esque material as Steve's uniform - but he'd made Bucky weapons, too. Bucky wasn't using whatever he could steal from the armory, oh no. He had a special case he carried with him at all times with a high-powered sniper rifle. He had Tony's own version of an M4A1, something new enough and unique enough not to even have a name. He had an M249 SAW, his favorite Sig Sauer P220, and a 61 Skorpion. He had flash grenades and explosive grenades, a handy block of C4 and all the charges for it he could need, he had mini-EMP bombs, and a thin wire garrote. There were razor blades and matches stashed in his pockets and under the plates in his arm, several knives wherever he could make them fit, and he even had a few poison darts for if he ever felt he needed them. 

The best part was, if he ever needed more, FRIDAY would drop a shipment to him via drone no matter where he was. He had cash and fake IDs. He had clothes and food. He even had a tent for the times he found himself so very far from civilization that he couldn't simply break in somewhere for shelter. 

He didn't back down from a single challenge, not even when a small group from the dregs of HYDRA caught onto his trail and tried to take him out. 

He didn't allow FRIDAY to let the others know where he was at any given point, but he did let her handle the updates. If he ever needed them, she could let them know. He wouldn't need them. They'd given up on Tony, so he would do this on his own. 

His search took him, eventually, to Argentia. He hated jungles and the humid, wet climate. He was the  _ Winter  _ Soldier, for fuck's sake. He was half certain his feet would have rotted off if it wasn't for the serum. The cliched complex hidden deep within the jungle, accessible only via a worn path made from tire tracks led him straight where he needed to be. They were at least smart enough to booby trap the place, but it didn't so much as slow him down. 

What he didn't quite expect to find was only a very small force of armed mercenaries as their only defense. The rest of the people in the complex seemed to be scientists - and not the sort who made weapons, not even the sort he'd seen with HYDRA so many times before. These weren't engineers or demolitions experts. They were biologists, geneticists, chemists. He showed them no mercy as he cut his way through the complex. 

He knew Tony was there. He only had to find him. 

Nearly everyone was dead. Bucky was half certain there were still a few people left alive, but he didn't go hunting for them. He ignored them in favor of searching every room in the complex. It wasn't as big as the compound, but he still had a lot of ground to cover. He marked every door with his stick of black greasepaint, leaving a streak across it if he'd already looked inside. 

It took hours to search every nook and cranny. The complex was bigger than he'd first thought. It didn't have only two floors like the outside of the building suggested. There were more floors underground, though he hadn't found so much as a map detailing the emergency exits to help guide him. He only had his marks on the doors to guide him. 

The first basement level was mostly full of labs. Chemicals and other things were grouped professionally and tidily, nothing out of place or in a precarious location to his, admittedly, untrained eye. He could barely stomach being in those rooms for long, though, the memories of HYDRA's tortures still too fresh even after so many years. The floor below that looked to be living quarters with two small kitchens and even a recreational room, though it paled in comparison to what Tony offered at the compound. 

The floor below that seemed to be the last floor, and Bucky was losing hope of finding Tony here. He'd attach the tablet to one of the computers so FRIDAY could get their data, and he'd search for any physical indication that they knew where Tony was, but he was quietly panicking on the inside. 

The bottom floor looked a lot like storage. He found dry stock for food, a huge walk-in freezer where he was tempted to just stay for a little while, and another storage room, a little further off, with lead-lined walls for their biohazard materials. He still had a few rooms to go, but he was done hoping. This wasn't the place, obviously.

He still didn't know who this group was or what, exactly, they were doing. That had struck him as odd before, but more so now. Were they trying to recreate the serum? That was the only thing he could come up with for those sorts of scientists to be here. That, or they were doing something involving mutants. He'd heard the rumors about a group - never named - that was trying to capture them. Alive. 

He made to open another door and frowned hard. It was locked. Why was a storage room locked? He broke the access panel with his metal fist. The other doors had all opened in case of critical failure. He knew there was some phrase for it, but he couldn't be assed to remember it. The door itself wasn't much to look at, either. Not wood, but not six-inch-thick steel or anything either. He grabbed the handle and ripped it straight out of the door, then shoved the inside handle out. It took only a second to put his hand inside the gap and wrench the door open. 

It was made up like a prison cell. A tiny slab of a bed soldered to the wall with a thin mattress, no coverings. A toilet. A sink. A table soldered to the floor. Nothing else. There were no signs that anyone had ever been in the room at all. So, then, why? Was it for anyone who thought of defecting or spilling their secrets? That seemed the most obvious choice. 

He wondered if the other two rooms he had yet to explore were the same. 

He made his way to the next room and repeated the action. He heard a sound through the door. He paused. Whoever it was didn't say anything. He wasn't sure who he was about to encounter. He grabbed his Sig and held it in his right hand, ready to aim and fire the moment he had the door open. He really sort of wished the doors opened inward rather than outward. 

He wrenched the door open and drew the gun up immediately, his eyes taking in as many details as he could in a split second. This room was lived in. It smelled of body odor and piss. There were papers on the table, and the mattress had a blanket and pillow. And there, at the far side of the room, was a person. 

Was Tony. 

“You're late,” Tony said half-heartedly. 


	4. Mystery pt 1

Bucky shoved his gun into his holster and darted into the room. He wrapped Tony into his arms and held him close - smell be damned. 

Tony looked terrible. His hair was long and greasy and a little matted. His goatee had grown into a full beard. His skin was ashen and pale. He had a bad cut on his forehead that looked red and swollen and was likely infected. His clothes - a wrinkled tee shirt and some ratty sweatpants - were stained in various places. As Bucky held him, he could feel how very thin he was. 

“Oh fuck,” Bucky breathed into Tony's too-long hair. “You're alive. You're here.”

“Ease up,” Tony said, his voice laced with pain. Bucky immediately let go and took a step back, one hand still partly extended, just in case Tony fell. Tony brought one hand up to his ribs and held them tenderly. “Not the nicest hosts, these guys.” 

“Shit,” Bucky said. He shook his head. “Come on, let's get you out of here.” 

Tony shook his head, then gestured with his other hand down to his leg. The sweatpants were stained dark around his thigh - and Bucky belatedly realized it was blood. “They cut the tracker out as soon as they grabbed me. Drugged me. I woke up here.”

“I can help you,” Bucky said softly, gently. He stepped over to Tony's side - the one he wasn't holding. Tony nodded and lifted his arm. Bucky ducked lower so Tony could wrap his arm around Bucky's neck. Bucky held Tony's uninjured side with his hand and together, they stepped away from the wall Tony had been using to prop himself up. 

“I can tell FRIDAY to send the quinjet,” Bucky said as they shuffled out of the room and down the hall. “She can get Dr. Cho to come out here and see you.”

“Not yet,” Tony said stiffly. “I need to know what they were making me work on. See, the Ten Rings? Those guys were idiots. They gave me a bunch of scraps to work with. These guys? They've only given me paper and pencil. Nothing else. Partial formulas I have to solve. I don't work? I don't eat. Thought I'd just starve myself at one point, but they figured out pretty fast that waterboarding me was effective enough. That, plus everything else… well, let's just say I did what they wanted.”

“As long as it kept you alive,” Bucky said, his voice and shoulders more tense than he meant for them to be. The thought of Tony deliberately starving himself to death made him feel sick. “There's living quarters on the next floor up. We'll get you cleaned up and fed and then we can get FRIDAY to run through their data and she can help you figure out what all of this was about.

Tony didn't argue. He stumbled a lot, tripping over his own feet or the air. Bucky wasn't frustrated with Tony's lack of progress, only that he seemed to be hurting so badly.

“Tony, let me carry you,” he begged. He wasn't ashamed that he was begging. He'd drop to his knees to add to the effect if he thought it would help. 

“Fine,” Tony said shortly.

Bucky knew then that Tony was far worse off than he was making himself out to be. He was as gentle as he could be as he scooped Tony into his arms. He walked much faster with Tony in his arms, though it was tricky on the stairs to make sure he didn't jostle Tony too much and injure him further. As soon as they got to a room, Bucky sat Tony on the counter in the bathroom and started the shower for him. 

“Do you want me to help?” Bucky asked - not if Tony  _ needed  _ it, because he clearly did, but if Tony  _ wanted  _ it. 

“You might as well see,” Tony said, sounding bitter and miserable. He struggled to peel off his shirt, then Bucky helped him to his feet and Tony shucked the sweatpants. 

Tony's thigh was wrapped with a dirty, bloody bandage. Bucky's fingers were trembling as he reached out to unwrap the bandage. The moment the first layer peeled away, he could smell it. Rot and infection. He couldn't get the last layer off, crusted as it was to Tony's skin, so he cut the end of the bandage free with a knife and then helped Tony into the shower. Tony leaned heavily against the wall and let part of the water cascade over him. Bucky adjusted the shower head so that it hit him full-force, and Tony gave him a weak smile. 

“I'll find you some clothes,” Bucky said quietly. “Shout if you need anything.” Tony gave him a tired nod and grabbed the soap from the shelf. Bucky slipped out of the bathroom and had to swallow back bile. 

What the fuck had they done to Tony?

Bucky ripped through various closets and dressers, searching for clothes he thought might fit Tony. He ended up with a pair of flannel pajama pants - and really? in this heat? - and a tee shirt that would likely be entirely too big, but everything else had been either too small or dress clothes. He'd wanted something easy for Tony to put on. 

Tony was still in the shower when he returned, scrubbing his hair vigorously. Bucky left the clothes and a clean towel on the counter and retreated into the bedroom to wait. It took an incredibly long time for Tony to finish, but he didn't blame him. When Tony emerged, he'd shaved his face clean, but his hair was still wet and dripping a little. 

“Better?” Bucky asked. Tony shrugged and nodded in the same movement. “What do you want to do next?”

“They have labs here, right?” Tony asked. Bucky nodded. “I need to see them. You don't have to stay. Find a rolling chair for me and I'll be good to go. I had a thought in the shower, and if I'm right, then things are both better and worse than I expected.”

Bucky stood and moved to gather Tony in his arms again to carry him up to the next floor. “How can it be both?”

“I don't want to say unless I know for sure,” Tony said. “So I guess just… get whatever you want from this place. You said something about getting FRIDAY in here earlier?”

“I have a tablet,” Bucky said with a nod. “It's outside with the rest of my shit.”

“Okay, so while I'm in the labs, you can go grab that,” Tony said with a nod. “I don't think it will take too long to figure things out.”

“It will take me a little while to get out there and back here,” Bucky admitted. “I kept everything pretty far away for if I blew this place. Didn't want everything to go to waste.”

“That's okay,” Tony said. “I'll be fine while you're gone.”

Bucky wasn't so sure, but he didn't call Tony on it. When they got to the first of the labs, he found a rolling office chair for Tony and sat him in it. “I'm going to find you something to eat before I go.” Tony nodded, already distracted by the closest computer. Bucky vanished down the stairs again and raided the first small kitchen, making Tony some instant soup and grabbing some bottles of water and crackers. He hoped it wouldn't make Tony sick, at the least. He left everything for Tony by his elbow, then headed outside. 

It was over two miles to walk to get his things, and he had to avoid the traps and animals as he made his way there. Climbing the tree was easy. Getting down with everything wasn't. He managed, of course, but it took time. He carried the entire backpack and the sniper rifle case with him. He'd traded out the long-sleeve shirt that was meant to go with his new tac gear for a pilfered wife beater when he'd first gotten to Argentina. He'd worn the vest earlier, but he unbuttoned it now. It was too hot for it. 

He wanted a shower of his own, once they had settled things and the quinjet was on the way. He was sweaty and sticky. It seemed to take even longer to get back to the complex, perhaps because he was so eager to return to Tony, perhaps because he was so worried, but he eventually got there. 

He dropped his bag and case in the office-looking rooms above the lab space and continued down with only the tablet in hand. Tony wasn't immediately visible, and he wasn't in the first lab where Bucky had left him. At least the bowl of soup was empty and most of the crackers were gone. 

Bucky ventured through the labs, his skin crawling as he stared at equipment that looked vaguely medical-like. “Tony?” he called. He felt his stomach drop to his boots when he didn't get an answer. He jogged through to the very last lab, and of course, that was where Bucky found him. 

“Tony!” Bucky shouted. Tony glanced up at Bucky as he plunged a needle into his injured thigh. He depressed a plunger full of reddish-gold colored liquid.

“This is going to hurt,” Tony said with a grimace. “But -” He stopped talking and convulsed so hard he fell out of the chair and onto the floor. Bucky ran to him and grabbed him, rolling him over. Tony's skin was  _ burning  _ hot. Not feverish, but as if Tony was actually on fire. 

“What the hell did you do?” Bucky shouted, half angry and half pleading. “Tony - Tony you can't -” He cut himself off, unable to even speak the words. Tony convulsed again and shouted - so loud. It echoed around the lab. Bucky eased Tony to the cool floor and ran to grab the tablet he'd dropped. He tugged the cord from his pocket and plugged it into the nearest computer. 

“FRIDAY!” he shouted as soon as it was connected and had power again. “Figure out what Tony just injected himself with!”

Tellingly, FRIDAY didn't comment that Bucky had found Tony at all. She was silent for a long, long moment. Tony screamed again, and Bucky's chest clenched with fear and worry. 

“It's Extremis,” she finally answered. “He's - he's modified the formula and synthesized it. I assume that was the injection. Was it red?” 

“Yes,” Bucky whispered. 

“Then it was likely Extremis,” FRIDAY said, sounding a little more confident. “There are notes here. It looks like boss has been working on their trials for the Extremis modifications the entire time he's been missing, but they weren't giving him all the pieces, and it continued failing. There are recorded arguments about whether or not they were going to allow him to know what he was working on. Boss didn't leave any notes himself. There are updates to the formula within the last two hours, though, and the records show that the last batch of the formula they'd had was altered and had finished synthesizing only about three minutes ago.” 

“Why would he do that?” Bucky whispered, turning to look at Tony. His skin was lighting up from underneath, like his body was cooking inside out. He thrashed across the floor. When his hand hit the tiles, they broke. 

“I'm going through the files as fast as I can,” FRIDAY said apologetically. Bucky said nothing in return, just watched and cringed as Tony screamed again. 

It felt like hours before FRIDAY spoke again. “Boss was sick. They have records of it. They were fighting an infection, but not well enough to cure it, only to slow it down a little. They… controlled the doses of the medication they were giving him based on how well he did as they asked. They had to give them intravenously for a time, after withholding them for too long.”

“Christ,” Bucky whispered. “They were killing him.”

“Slowly,” FRIDAY intoned. “Shall I update the others and send the quinjet?”

“Not yet,” Bucky said reluctantly. “I don't - FRI, what is this going to do to him?”

“Heal him,” FRIDAY said, “but only if his body doesn't reject it first. It could take as long as three days to know if it works, though most trials they were running failed within the first three. Most successes were declared after only twelve hours.” 

Bucky sank to the floor, his back to the desk where the computer was. “Is there anything I can do?”

“I'm afraid not,” FRIDAY said softly. “Now that he's injected himself, you'll just have to wait.”

“Fuck.” Bucky put his head in his hands and cringed again as Tony screamed. “Don't tell the others until we know one way or the other about Tony.”


	5. Mystery pt 2

Those first three hours were pure agony. Bucky was half convinced that he'd finally found Tony only to watch him die right before his eyes. After that, the screams tapered off. Bucky wasn't sure if that was good or bad, and FRIDAY would only tell him it was inconclusive. When Tony finally fell still, Bucky attempted to move him, but his body was too hot for Bucky to touch. He was so hot, the floor was smoldering beneath him. It was strong tile, though, so it didn't give way. 

Bucky didn't leave Tony's side the entire time. He sat in that damn lab for twelve solid hours, watching Tony burn. After the twelve hours were up, his body began to cool. FRIDAY said that meant that, most likely, Tony's body had accepted Extremis. He was able to move Tony down to the next floor and get him into a bed. He wiped away the sweat and dust, and then he showered himself. He ate. He sat at the foot of the bed and slept. He hadn't stopped moving since he'd set foot in Argentina three days ago. He could go longer without sleep, but it got harder and harder, and he was exhausted. 

When he woke, Tony still hadn't budged. He cooked a big meal with everything he could find in both kitchens and put most of it in the refrigerator for Tony for later. He wandered through the complex for anything they might have had on paper that wasn't in their systems. He asked FRIDAY if she knew who was in charge of everything. She didn't. She was already working on tracking down the money to fund everything, but it was routed through several foreign bank accounts, and she was having some trouble getting to the origin. 

At hour twenty-one - Bucky had FRIDAY keeping a tally - Tony woke. 

The first thing Bucky did was yell at him about how much he'd scared him. 

The second thing he did was kiss Tony. 

Tony gave Bucky a small smile. “I was dying anyway. Gangrene and sepsis. With my heart the way it is, I was fucked. It wasn't a matter of getting me to a hospital, it was a matter of whether I would even survive getting out of whatever fucking country we're in. At best? I'd have lost my entire leg and I'd have spent months in the hospital in intensive care. At worst? I wouldn't have made it until the quinjet got here. Extremis was the best way.”

Bucky almost wanted to cry. He cupped Tony's cheeks in his hands and pressed his forehead to Tony's. “You could have  _ warned  _ me. You could have waited for FRIDAY, at least.”

“I had to work fast,” Tony said, and and he sounded apologetic. “I could feel my thoughts starting to slip as the formula was synthesizing. That's one of the signs of septic shock. There wasn't any time to lose. I didn't know when you'd be back.” He pressed his lips to the inside of Bucky's wrist. “I'm sorry, for whatever that's worth. And thank you for coming.”

“I'm sorry it took so long to find you,” Bucky said sadly. “I wasn't even sure I had the right place. Just a feeling. Started searching on the ground almost three months ago. We searched from the compound before that. I never stopped.”

“I don't deserve you,” Tony said with a little half-smile. 

“You deserve the world, Tony,” Bucky countered. He reluctantly pulled away. “Pepper has Extremis, right? Is yours different? Are you going to go all nuclear like she did before you could neutralize the formula for her?”

Tony laughed. “No, that's what I was doing while you were gone. Whoever got their hands on the original formula had already altered it. Less explosive side effects now.” Tony ran his hand down Bucky's arm, and Bucky watched as Tony's eyes flashed brilliant blue. “It's incredible. I can  _ feel _ your arm. Not physically. I can feel the tech. Interact with it.”

“I'll get you out of your workshop now,” Bucky joked, though it fell a little flat. “I haven't told the others I've found you yet. I told FRIDAY to wait until we knew for sure what would happen to you. Are you ready to go home?”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “We have work to do.”

Bucky tensed a little. “We?”

“You mean you  _ don't _ want to help me figure out who orchestrated my kidnapping and tortured me for six months so I'd help them modify the Extremis virus?” Bucky gave Tony flat look, and Tony smiled. “Me and you, Bucky. Together.”

“All right,” Bucky agreed with a nod. “Together.”


	6. Mystery pt 3

Tony was welcomed back to the compound in private, first. The Avengers hardly let him out of their sight for days afterward, but Bucky couldn't exactly blame them. He felt the same, after all. He, Tony, and FRIDAY kept their little project with figuring out who had taken Tony a secret from the other Avengers. Natasha probably knew they were still looking, but she'd only offered to help the one time and left them to it when Tony declined. 

Between Tony literally coming back from the dead to SI and the public and his work for both SI and the Avengers, he didn't have much time to devote to searching for who'd taken him - but he didn't stop looking, and neither did Bucky. Bucky handled most of it, working with FRIDAY, but Tony helped when and where he could. It wasn't that he didn't want to devote more time to it, it was that he couldn't. He'd even considered telling the Avengers what had happened to make them take it more seriously and to get the issue bumped up on their priority list. Whoever was attempting to replicate and manufacture Extremis wasn't anyone to take lightly. He'd eventually decided against it, though. Whoever  _ was  _ working on Extremis wasn't trying to take over the world - yet - so it wasn't technically an Avengers-level threat anyway. 

“I just can't figure out who is behind this,” Tony said, raking his hand through his hair. He'd had it cut almost as soon as they'd come home, a little longer than before. Bucky was a little sad that Tony no longer had the soft silvering at his temples or in his goatee or the laugh lines around his mouth, but he didn't mind that Tony was essentially back to the way he had been at 35 and wouldn't ever really age. 

“Killian's dead,” Bucky said, going over what they already knew - again. “So is Hansen. Anyone else who was working on Extremis who's still alive and has the resources or the potential to get them for this sort of operation?”

“We've found everyone we could,” Tony pointed out. “Most of them were arrested after AIM went down in flames. Those who are out now have taken some low-level positions with companies overseas. They don't make nearly enough money, and they don't have the sort of connections that would indicate the ability to buy these kinds of chemicals, let alone hire so many scientists and mercs and buy that complex.”

“None of those who have left prison have even taken so much as a vacation longer than two days,” FRIDAY offered. “And those trips were carefully planned and involved lots of tourist destinations. I've been monitoring all the ingoing and outgoing communications from the other inmates, but there hasn't been anything suspicious, unless you count the one jailhouse marriage to that woman in Missouri.”

“Did we look into her?” Tony asked, fiddling with a skinny screwdriver. 

“Yes, boss,” FRIDAY said. “She makes twenty-eight thousand dollars a year as receptionist at an accounting firm.”

“And we looked into everyone associated with her, too, right? Friends, coworkers, managers, all of them?”

“There's nothing there, Tony,” Bucky said, feeling frustrated. “The money trails are all dead-ends. Fake accounts under fake names, most of it deposited through that bitcoin shit. We've tried tracing it a hundred different ways.”

“And we still have eyes on all the flagged chemicals, too,” Tony sighed. 

“It's all above-board, boss,” FRIDAY said apologetically. “The only company even remotely suspicious wasn't purchasing even half the required chemicals, and they were doing illegal testing on rats to find a cure for cancer. I reported it to the proper authorities and they've since shut down that company.”

There's got to be something we're missing,” Tony said. “This doesn't make any sense.”

“We'll figure it out,” Bucky said with grim determination. “Whatever it takes, Tony. We'll figure it out.”


	7. Not Dead Bad Guy

The first few random attacks went widely unnoticed and unreported by world media. They happened in different countries at different times, and various terrorist groups claimed responsibility for the attacks. It wasn't until there was a bomb in Indonesia that killed nearly twenty people that anyone really began to take notice. It took six more bombs - in widely varied countries and locals with hugely differing populations, for anyone to quite realize that something wasn't quite right about these attacks. 

There were no bomb parts, for one. For two, the bombs burned at close to 3,000 degrees Celsius. Tony had seen that figure before. He knew this particular M.O.

He called Bucky to his workshop immediately and pulled every scrap of evidence he had from the old A.I.M./Mandarin situation. Bucky walked in with a pensive frown. Tony pulled up Killian's picture first. 

“It's A.I.M.,” Tony said. “It has to be. They're using the same system they used last time, almost exactly. The unstable Extremis soldiers they'd injected would explode,” a video grew larger and played behind him, showing proof, “and it would burn at ridiculously high temperatures and evaporate anything in the vicinity. That's why there isn't any residue at any of the scenes. Not even bodies or body parts.”

“I thought the virus had been modified,” Bucky said, stepping closer to look at everything spread before him. “Why would they revert back to the unstable version?”

“I don't think they're using people,” Tony said grimly. He found a video and enlarged it. “This footage was uploaded to a remote server in real time. Even though the camera was destroyed, we still have it.” He pressed play. The crowded street bustled with life and people. And then there was the explosion. “Watch closely,” Tony said, and he played it again. Bucky's eyes darted for anything out of the ordinary, but he didn't catch anything. It was too crowded. 

“I don't see anything,” he said with a frown.

“I didn't either, not at first,” Tony said. “I've watched this about eight hundred times, though.” He zoomed in on the bottom left corner of the screen. “Watch here.” He let the video play for a few seconds, then stopped it. “There. See the dog?” Bucky nodded. “Watch it.” He hit play, and Bucky kept his eyes on the mutt. 

It was a skinny, half-starved thing. It's tail looked broken, and its fur was patchy and ragged. A split second before the explosion, someone kicked the dog in the ribs. 

“Go back,” Bucky said. Tony backed up the video by ten seconds and played it again. 

Guy stumbles over dog. Dog yelps and cowars. Guy kicks dog. Explosion.

“Stop it a half a second before the explosion.” 

Tony reversed a few frames. And - there! The dog was glowing. 

“What the hell,” Bucky muttered. He looked over at Tony. “They're giving the unstable version to animals?”

“Not people,” Tony confirmed with a nod. He pulled up a map of the world covered in tiny red dots. “And there have been more of these super hot explosions than we thought, too. More than twenty across the globe, though most of them don't gave casualties and aren't in big cities. My guess? They were testing the reaction, first, and then started injecting the local animals “

Bucky chewed his bottom lip. “A.I.M. died out, though. We've checked.”

“We didn't check for shell companies,” Tony said. “Not sure why, but it didn't happen. A.I.M. owns Suremed.” He shifted the holographic screens with a wave of his hand and pulled forth one on Suremed. “They're tiny, not on anyone's radar. Private funding from - you guessed it - untraceable sources. Their mission statement and goals are all vague and don't say anything about what they're actually trying to do. They haven't produced any meaningful products or research. They have twenty different specialists employed, primarily in the biomedical fields. They work out of Iowa. Suremed owns a few shell companies, too. One of those shell companies, Gunderden and Son, owned that base in Argentina.”

“Fuck,” Bucky muttered. He flipped though several screens rapidly, searching for any hints and connections. “So then who's pulling the strings here? And what do they want?”

“That's the thing,” Tony said, reclining in his rolling chair with his arms crossed over his chest and a pensive expression, “we haven't been able to figure that out.”

“So we interrogate the doctors at the place in Iowa,” Bucky said seriously. “They have the most direct connection so far. They might know something no one else does. Or maybe we can find something there we didn't in Argentina.”

“We can't just go busting in and start arresting people,” Tony pointed out, though he didn't want to. “That's not exactly legal.”

“And?” Bucky snorted. “They aren't doing anything legal, either. We'd be able to prove that as soon as we got in there.” He paced back and forth in front of the screens slowly, absorbing the information in front of him. He stopped in front of Killian's photo. “Are we sure this guy is really dead? Didn't he have Extremis, too?”

“Well, I mean… Pepper did incinerate the guy,” Tony said with a shrug. “I'm not sure how he could come back from that.” Tony stood slowly and joined Bucky. “Why, what are you thinking?”

“Could you heal from that?” Bucky asked quietly.

“I don't know,” Tony admitted. “It's… possible, I suppose. From what I've been able to gather from that facility's research notes, there's a portion of the brain that's responsible for the regeneration. I think, as long as that part survives, then the rest will just… grow back. Eventually. That level of destruction would likely take years to regenerate, but it's possible. Maybe.”

“Then I'd start trying to find him,” Bucky said grimly, jabbing a finger at Killian's face.

**Author's Note:**

> [come find me on tumblr](https://shyglittercreature.tumblr.com/)


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